By F. A. Carrington, Esq. 



19 



The Pillory. 



The pillory at Marlborough was used as late as the year 1807. 

 Several members of our society who were at the congress at 

 Marlborough in September last, had seen a person in it in the year 

 1807, 1 and by the kindness of Mr. Kite I have been favored with 

 two illustrations of it. The annexed woodcut represents the re- 

 maining portion, which is still pre- 

 served in the Town Hall. It is a 

 wooden frame 4 feet 3 inches in height, 

 by about 3 feet in width, containing 

 four horizontal pannels, the central two 

 of which, sliding upwards and down- 

 wards, enclosed the neck and wrists of 

 the criminal in three holes pierced for 

 the purpose, the larger one being about 

 six, and the two smaller ones each 

 three inches in diameter. The pillory 

 must have been a very ancient punish- 

 ment for perjury. 

 Sir Henry Spelman in his Glossary, Tit. Healsfang, states that this was the 

 pillory and that it was by the laws of Canute the punishment of perjury, and 

 for this he cites a MS. of the laws of that sovereign, Chap. 64., but in the 

 " Collection of Anglo Saxon laws " edited by Dr. Wilkins in the reign of George 

 the First and " the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England" published by the 

 Record Commissioners in 1840, this law is not to be found by this reference, but 

 in the latter work in the laws of King Canute (p. 17) the law cited by Sir H. 

 Spelman is given in the original Anglo Saxon with this translation. 

 " Of false witness. 



r* 37, And if any one stand openly in false witness and he be convicted, let not 

 his witness but let him pay to the King or to the landrica [lord of the soil] 

 according to his healsfang." [a kind of pillory].* 



Remains of the Marlborough 

 Pillory. 



1 Another criminal underwent a similar sentence in the Market Place at 

 Salisbury about the same date ; and a third in the Market Place at Devizes, 

 some few years earlier. 



* These explanations are taken from the Glossary at the end of the -work, and to the latter explana- 

 tion the learned editor Mr. Benjamin Thorpe, F.S.A., adds this note. " This is at least the original 

 signification of the term, but which seems to have fallen into disuse at a very early period ; no men- 

 tion of it in that sense occurring in all these laws where it merely means a certain fine graduated 

 according to the degree ot the offender, and was probably the amount of mulct annexed to every class 

 as a commutation for a degrading punishment. Healsfang may therefore be defined, the c sum every 

 man sentenced to the pillory would have had to pay to save him from that punishment had it been 



c2 



